Calf

by Andrea Kleine

  I want to push something in you to make you light up. I know you know the real me and I know the real you. I’m waiting for you, but I can’t help loving you already.

  Love,

  Jeff

  P.S. I miss John too.

  Jeffrey folded the letter and slipped it into an envelope. He wrote in his best script across the front: “Miss Amber Carrol.” Then he put on his jacket and went downstairs. He hadn’t slept all night.

  When the elevator opened on the lobby level, Jeffrey was surprised at the amount of hubbub. It was just before five thirty a.m. The complimentary, continental breakfast buffet was being demolished by the beer-drinking guys as they gulped coffee out of Styrofoam cups. Jeffrey was expecting an empty lobby and a half-asleep desk clerk who wouldn’t remember his face when he dropped off the letter. Now the joint was full of people.

  Jeffrey almost didn’t get off the elevator, but when it started to shut, he put his arm out to stop it. He felt clammy from lack of sleep and realized he hadn’t eaten dinner last night.

  Jeffrey walked up to the front desk and pretended to be looking at the street map under the plastic countertop. The desk clerk asked if he needed help. Jeffrey shook his head and followed a random avenue with his index finger. With his other hand he fingered the letter in his breast pocket and slowly tugged it out, millimeter by millimeter, until the envelope fully emerged and lightly stroked his chin. Without anyone seeing, he let the envelope fall into the message box. It touched down and Jeffrey gave it a little push, sliding it between the other letters and folded messages until it was innocently hidden from view. For good measure, he summoned the desk clerk and asked him the best way to the Library of Congress.

  As the clerk was explaining the bus route, the pony-tailed soda guy from the night before came up behind him.

  “Hey, man,” he said, clamping his meaty hand on Jeffrey’s shoulder. “Ready to rock and roll?”

  He gave Jeffrey a burly one-armed hug and pulled him toward the door. He turned to another beer drinker and said, “Hey, this is the dude who let me bend his ear last night about the old lady.” He laughed and gave Jeffrey a few slaps on the back.

  “Hey, oh, wait a minute,” the soda guy said. He walked over to the buffet table and picked up two donuts.

  “One for the baby,” he said biting into the first donut and rubbing his potbelly, “and one for the road.” He wrapped his second donut in a napkin.

  “Let’s rock,” he said and busted through the lobby doors.

  Jeffrey, unused to being welcomed into the masculine fray, followed suit and picked up a jelly donut with a napkin. He climbed aboard the private bus and sat in his own seat across from the soda guy. Jeffrey could play along, help out even, and get closer to Amber.

  The bus lurched through the pre-rush-hour streets and most of the guys dozed off or flipped through clipboards of paper. When they arrived at their “location,” everyone stumbled out and began unloading black boxes from the luggage compartment. Jeffrey thought lifting them would be bad for his back. He saw other guys sling thick extension cords over their shoulders, so he opted for that as camouflage. They were on the grassy Mall setting up equipment around a park bench, the Washington Monument shimmering behind them through the early-morning mist. We need to hurry, someone said, if we’re going to make magic hour. This was countered with, that all depends if Sleeping Beauty wakes up. Someone yelled back, oh yeah, why don’t you go and be her Prince Charming?

  Finally he saw her. She was marching across the green being chased by a guy with a clipboard and a walkie-talkie. She turned around and yelled at him, “IF YOU EVER FUCKING DO THAT TO ME AGAIN, I’LL HAVE YOU KILLED! DO YOU HEAR ME!”

  The group fell silent.

  “Who the fuck does she think she is?” one guy said under his breath.

  “Maybe that was a rehearsal,” someone else said and a chuckle rippled through the group.

  Clipboard guy tried to reason with her.

  “FUCK YOU!” she screamed and slammed her trailer door shut.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” soda guy said.

  Jeffrey stared at the metal mobile home, the extension cord still hanging from his shoulder.

  “Hey man, I think they probably need that over there.” Someone was pointing to the park bench. Jeffrey walked over to the guys threading wires through the slats. It looked as if they were rigging dynamite.

  “Thanks, man,” a guy said as he lifted the wires off Jeffrey’s shoulder.

  Jeffrey felt naked without them. It was going to take more effort to blend in. He needed a clipboard, or at least a notebook and pencil.

  He wandered through the set and made his way to the outskirts where there were four parked trailers. They were marked on the door: “Hair and Makeup,” “CIA Informer,” “Ted.” The last one was marked by a star with simply the letter A.

  Jeffrey stood by her thin door and listened. He heard her sobbing inside. His heart went out to her. How could she possibly act under these circumstances when all these people hated her? They were all jealous. They didn’t know her. Jeffrey wanted to knock on the door and go inside to comfort her. He wanted to put his arms around her and stroke her soft head like a tiny kitten. He hesitated because this might be part of her process. Maybe she had to cry in the next scene and she was getting into character. On the other hand, she could be truly upset.

  Jeffrey needed to write something. He noticed a pile of equipment cases next to a fire hydrant and slowly walked over. There was a clipboard resting on top of a case and Jeffrey plucked it and pulled the pen out from under its metal clasp. He flipped through the pages looking for a blank sheet. Finding none, he took one of the last pages, thinking they probably weren’t that important. He turned it over and wrote a quick note.

  Don’t cry, my little Amber lamb. I am always here for you. If you need me just open the door and let me in. None of these jerks understand you the way I do.

  I love you forever. I will protect you.

  —Jeff

  Jeffrey folded the note in half. He wrote in large block letters, “TO AMBER,” across the front so she would know it was for her.

  Jeffrey walked over to her trailer door. He took precautions not to step on any twigs or fallen leaves so he wouldn’t make any noise. That was something the American Indians were always careful to do. Two suspended metal steps led up to her starred door. Jeffrey kept his feet on the ground. He tried to slide his note under the door, but a piece of rubber blocked it. Instead, he pushed it between the vent openings in the lower half of the door. He tapped it all the way through to the other side and heard it drift to the floor like a paper airplane. He thought he shouldn’t be too obvious; he should try to blend in. He walked away from the trailer, listening carefully in case she called out to him.

  When Jeffrey heard the trailer door open, he consciously kept one foot moving in front of the other. He needed an extension cord to swing over his shoulder. He needed something, a walkie-talkie or something. He should have held on to that clipboard, but now it was too far away, all the way back by the hydrant. Although, that could be a good excuse. Walk over there and say he forgot his clipboard.

  Jeffrey thought he should go for it. He turned and walked a roundabout way back to the hydrant. He could see Amber standing on the metal steps holding the note in her hand pressed against her hip. Jeffrey was giddy—something he had written was touching her body.

  He was almost at the fire hydrant equipment pile when someone swept in, picked up the clipboard, tucked it under his arm, and quickly walked away. Jeffrey stopped in his tracks. He had lost his alibi. He had lost his point of destination. He decided to walk to the hydrant anyway. When he arrived, he sat sideways to Amber and stared at the ground. This was his perfected surveillance technique: Let your hair fall in your face and then turn your head ever so slightly toward what you want to see. That way you can peer through your hair and no one will know you are looking at them.

  Amber was talking to some guy in a base
ball cap. The two of them huddled close together and Amber passed him the note. Baseball cap read it, then scanned the set and waived over a young guy with a walkie-talkie.

  “Do we have any new hires or locals working on set today?” Baseball cap acted like he was the guy in charge.

  “No, I don’t think so. Why? What’s up?”

  “Some freak’s leaving Amber love notes under her door and it’s creeping her out.”

  “Whoa. Can I see?”

  Baseball cap passed the note. Amber grabbed it back.

  “I don’t need everyone knowing about this,” she said. “I just want it taken care of. I don’t need to be attacked while I’m trying to work.”

  “Why don’t you station someone outside her trailer?”

  “You got it, chief.”

  “You’re sure there’s no one new on the set. Someone maybe you didn’t get the chance to check out?” she asked.

  “I really don’t think so.”

  Amber turned away from the lunkheads. She looked right at Jeffrey and Jeffrey peered at her through the strands of hair hanging in his face.

  She turned back to walkie-talkie guy and baseball cap. She said something quietly that Jeffrey couldn’t quite hear and motioned in his direction with her thumb. Baseball cap looked past Amber’s shoulder and spotted Jeffrey. So did walkie-talkie guy. Baseball cap rubbed Amber’s arm and he and walkie-talkie guy started walking toward the hydrant.

  Jeffrey stayed absolutely still. If worse comes to worse, he could always turn on the fire hydrant and spray them with water to create a diversion. He reached down to the knob and tried to unscrew it, but it was dead shut.

  “Hey! Hey you! Can I talk to you for a second?” baseball cap yelled.

  Jeffrey stayed still.

  “Hey, you on the hydrant!”

  Jeffrey remained motionless. He wondered if Amber was watching. Fucking hypocrites. They don’t know anything about her.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you!”

  Jeffrey moved before they got too close to him. They called out again and Jeffrey instinctively began to run. He didn’t look back, but he was sure the two guys were chasing him. He ducked between two parked trucks and ran across Independence Avenue. Cars in four different lanes screeched and honked at him and Jeffrey fell down, tearing a hole in his jeans and scraping his lower leg. He made it back to his feet, ran down the escalator steps of the Smithsonian Metro station, and fed his farecard into the gate. As luck had it, a train pulled up right then and Jeffrey got on board and conveniently found a seat. His legs were shaking. He was sweaty and out of breath, but he was laughing on the inside. He wished they had followed him down here so he could wave good-bye to their sorry asses as the train pulled into the underground tube.

  *

  JEFFREY’S KNEE ACHED as he entered the hotel lobby. He had been walking on his injured leg all day, having ducked into the Museum of American History as a way to kill time and shake the goon squad off his trail. It was only one Metro stop from the movie set; they would never think of looking for him so close by. He had spent a good part of the afternoon watching the museum’s giant pendulum swing back and forth and eventually knock over a little peg, thus indicating that the Earth was indeed rotating. Now that the sun was going down, he limped clumsily into his home away from home. The tear in his pants kept brushing against the raw part of his wound, stinging his skin. He wasn’t sure if the desk clerk looked at him funny or not. He made a beeline for the elevator.

  Once upstairs, Jeffrey staggered down the hall to the ice machine and filled up his wood-patterned plastic bucket. He clutched the fake walnut bucket to his middle and hobbled back to his room. As he fiddled with his keys, he heard someone’s door opening. Jeffrey didn’t want to see any of the guys from the movie set so he hastily unlocked his door, which caused the ice bucket to tumble out of his arms and crash to the floor, cubes asunder. He grabbed the bucket and shut himself inside.

  He looked through the peephole to see who it was. No one. Whoever it was must’ve walked in the other direction. Jeffrey was worried about the ice cubes littering the carpet outside his door, but he didn’t want to poke his head into the hall and risk being seen. He wondered how long the cubes would take to melt. He remembered hearing that a sharp icicle was supposed to be the best murder weapon because the evidence melted away. He forgot where exactly he heard that. Maybe he read it somewhere or saw it on TV.

  Still, water stains on the floor might cause attention. He didn’t want the janitor knocking on his door.

  Jeffrey slowly, carefully, hoping it wouldn’t squeak, opened his door. He squatted down and scraped the ice cubes into his room. There were a few he had to crawl out to get, but he was pretty sure he got them all. One ice cube sitting in the hallway wasn’t going to send up a red flag. Before he shut the door, he hung the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the doorknob. Then he locked the door and latched the little gold chain in place.

  Jeffrey popped a Valium. As the shakiness subsided, he realized he was hungry. He wandered over to the bed and picked up the phone. He deserved room service. He deserved an over-priced cheeseburger deluxe with fries and a piece of apple pie à la mode. A cup of coffee and a Coke.

  A bellhop delivered a cart to his door and Jeffrey signed for it, feeling rather grown up that he was signing for things. Jeffrey turned on the TV for comfort as he ate. The six o’clock news. Brezhnev, Beirut, El Salvador, Iran versus Iraq. Same old, same old. And to wrap things up, here’s a shot of a flamingo that escaped from a zoo in Florida and went for a walk down Main Street. When he was done eating, Jeffrey peeled himself off the bed to wheel the cart into the hallway. No one told him he was supposed to do that, he figured it out himself.

  As he piled his dirty dishes back on the cart he noticed his room service check sticking out from underneath a silver domed lid. He pulled out the piece of paper. His order was handwritten followed by a stamp that said, “charged to room,” and at the very bottom of the check, in different handwriting, was:

  Thanks! —Bobby.

  Bobby.

  Bobby was probably the bellboy. He probably wrote that so when you check out you say, “Here’s a bob for Bobby.” Smart.

  BobbyBobbyBobbyBobby.

  He had something here.

  Jeffrey picked up the phone and dialed the code for the front desk.

  “Lobby desk, how may I help you?”

  “Hi, this is Bobby with room service. I have a little problem. I was delivering some food and I guess I got the orders mixed up. Could you do me a favor and connect me with Miss Carrol in the penthouse so I can clarify the situation?”

  “Sure, Bobby.”

  It was that easy. It couldn’t be that easy.

  In the silence during the connection, Jeffrey bit his bottom lip. It felt numb and his teeth slowly slid off, back into his mouth.

  There was a click followed by a two-pulse ringing.

  “Hello?”

  It was her. She was six stories above him. They were connected. Ear to ear. She was probably sitting on the edge of her bed. Her bed was probably in the same position as Jeffrey’s. Or she could be lying down. She might have been resting after her long day and simply rolled over onto her stomach to reach for the phone.

  Jeffrey held his breath. He wasn’t sure for how long.

  “Hello??” she asked again.

  He wasn’t some freak. She had to know that.

  “Miss Carrol?” He felt formal calling her that. It seemed stiff and old-fashioned. It was polite, though. The polite thing to do. Girls appreciate good manners. His mother was always saying that.

  “Yes?”

  “Hi.”

  There was a pause. She was probably rolling onto her back to make herself more comfortable.

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s . . . we met in California.”

  “What?”

  “At the Sunrise.”

  “The Sunrise?”

  “Yeah. I’m in town. In DC, that is, and I was wo
ndering if you’d like to go out to dinner sometime. Someplace nice, we could talk and . . . talk about your films and pick up where we left off.”

  “Where we left off?”

  “Yeah. Are you free tomorrow by any chance?”

  There was another pause and Jeffrey thought he could hear the rustling of sheets.

  “I’m really sorry, I didn’t quite hear you when you said your name.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s just that I meet so many people and I travel a lot and I’m so terrible with names.”

  “It’s Je . . .” Jeffrey stopped himself. He remembered she had misunderstood the note he left under her trailer door. He had signed his name. He didn’t want her to hold it against him. He’d rather start fresh.

  “Jed?”

  “No, it’s Jay.” He didn’t particularly like the name Jay, but he couldn’t think of any other J names on the spot. Better to stick with the letter. He could sign everything J. Hackney and she wouldn’t know the difference. She would think it was a silly mistake she’d made on her own and they would joke about it later when they were married.

  “Jay, right.”

  “How’s tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “For dinner.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. They have me on this incredibly tight schedule, I really can’t. Thanks for the invitation. I actually have to go now.”

  “What about . . . maybe later in the week?”

  “I’m really booked solid the whole time I’m here. It’s an exhausting schedule. I’m sorry. Maybe some other time back in California.”

  “How about . . .”

  “Bye,” she said in a sleepy, sexy voice and hung up.

  He debated calling her right back, but then he thought she probably was tired and needed to sleep. She’d been on her feet dodging fake bullets all day.

  Jeffrey forced himself to stay up until two a.m. He had concluded that this would be the best time to slip downstairs. The bar closed at midnight and the crew would have to get some sleep before their five a.m. donuts.